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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25360258">Half-Day Drinking</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoneforreality/pseuds/notoneforreality'>notoneforreality</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [20]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>James Bond (Craig movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>007 Fest, 007 Fest 2020, Drunkenness, F/F, M/M, Post-Mission, Prompt Fill, Q Branch, Shovel Talk, Sort Of, Team Q Branch, everyone hates Double-oh Two, except Q and R, just 1.5k words of q branch minions chilling, to the wrong person, whilst drunk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:28:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,501</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25360258</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoneforreality/pseuds/notoneforreality</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Q doesn't drink, but he's a benevolent boss and keeps alcohol on hand for special occassions. Bond and Beaufort are both back in the UK relatively unharmed, and that's special enough.</p><p>Q-Branch relax after a difficult mission.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James Bond/Q, R/Agent Bobby Carter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [20]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795726</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>87</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Half-Day Drinking</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for--<br/>20th July: Q-Branch Day;<br/>This prompt from the 2020 anon list: drunk in Q-branch: "He gave us the heebie-jeebies. He had nothing else to give."</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Neither Q nor R drink alcohol, but neither of them have an objection to other people drinking around them. On the odd occasion, they encourage it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Two weeks straight of intensive mission coordination is no one’s idea of fun, and as soon as Bond and Beaufort have finished equipment debrief — they’d had to retire the term ‘equipment return’ several years ago, when it became clear that more often than not, it was a misnomer — Q goes to find the alcohol stashed under the sink in the kitchenette and declares a half day.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Immediately, Q-Branch dissolves into chaos. Constance Arbor appears from nowhere and vaults a desk to grab Holly Hall in a hug, spinning her around and yelling. The two of them were in charge of tracking for most of the mission, trading shifts and not getting more than four hours sleep in the three days during which Bond and Beaufort had dropped of the grid. When they agents had got back on the plane to England, Holly had refused to leave watching the tracker; Connie had gone to the range to blow things up. Usually, she doesn’t emerge for the rest of the day, but word travels fast in echoey tunnels, and alcohol is enough to coax her out of any funk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On the other side of the room, George Fox is slumped against Sam Locke, who’s comforting a sobbing baby minion. It’s one of the new hires, their first time working a mission, and they’d been on eyes when Beaufort had been gone down for long enough to be mildly concerned. They hadn’t cried at the time, because there was still work to be done, but now there’s no reason to keep up the facade.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a good thing that Sam is over there looking after them, because Q would have told them that Double-oh Two doesn’t deserve any of their concern and he’s fine so there’s nothing to worry about, anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Q stays away from that corner and starts pouring himself lemonade, handing a can of coca-cola to R.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We did good,” she says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure,” he says, because they did do well, objectively, but it none of it was good. He hates working his staff like this, hates seeing people asleep in corners or awake at desks with staring, red eyes, everyone jittery and on edge and trying to organise weapons drops and retrieval and safe houses and transport. The half days at the end of long missions go some way to making up for it, though.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Within two hours, most of the people still in Q-Branch are well on their way to drunk, if not there already. Some people have gone home — to family, to sleep, to more substantial food than the three packets of cocktail sausages Q found in the fridge — but the rest of them are scattered around the main office, the atmosphere completely different from six hours ago.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R sits at her desk, spinning lazily in her chair, and Q sits on her desk, legs crossed and leaning back on one hand while he drinks from the other. Sam is sat on the floor, leaning against the next table over, while Connie leans against him, eyes closed and half asleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thought Bloody Beaufort was dead for a minute,” Sam says. “Fuckin idiot shouldn’t have start chatting shit in front of someone with an assault rifle.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Next time let him bleed out,” Connie mumbles. “He told me his gun wasn’t working and then it turned out he’d stolen Papava’s because ‘it looked cooler’.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How long did it take to explain the palm coding to him for the seventh time?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Connie snorts, derisive. “You think he stayed quiet long enough for an explanation? He shouted at me until Papava turned up and whacked him hard enough that he said she’d broken his arm. She told him to grow up. It was cool.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What a wanker,” Sam says, face dark as he swigged from his drink.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Scarlett is great,” Connie protests, without bothering to open her eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam rolls his. “I meant Beaufort.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” Connie says. “Yeah, he’s a prick.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He asked me if I shower with my hijab on,” R says, and Q frowns.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You didn’t mention that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R waves him off. “It was fine. Bobby suggested sparring and knocked him out in about two seconds. Plus Tanner was watching so he put Beaufort in training again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For a Double-oh, he’s an idiot,” Q says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Got that right,” Sam says, face still thunderous. “First time I met him he told me I had to do whatever he said because he was a Double-oh and I was like you know we’re in completely different lines of command, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“First time I met James, he said I had spots,” Q says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“First time I met him,” R says, pulling her cup up in front of her mouth to hide the fact that she’s grinning, “he looked me dead in the eye and said ‘I’m very sorry but could you let the Quartermaster know that a komodo dragon ate his gun?’”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What the fuck?” Connie says, opening her eyes to squint at R, ostensibly to try to work out if she’s joking. Her lips twitch, though, and Sam looks at lot more interested than when talking about Beaufort, so Q decides this is a good topic to stay on. That’s handy, as he has plenty of stories, as does R.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“One time I ordered him a drink and her poured it down the toilet to ‘cut out the middle man’,” Q says. Sam looks decidedly more amused.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>R take her turn: “Once he asked if I was watching the CCTV, and when I said yes, he stared at it and took his earpiece out before stepping on it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What a wanker,” Sam cheers, throwing his glass up in a toast and sloshing half the beer over his arm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If we’re talking about cameras,” Connie says, closing her eyes again and snuggling into Sam, “what about your girlfriend? Any time Carter is near a camera she keeps looking into it like she’s on the office.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That draws a long-suffering sigh from R. “I told her to stop doing that. What part of ‘you’re a </span>
  <em>
    <span>secret </span>
  </em>
  <span>agent’ is hard to understand. I spend most nights after her missions going through and scrubbing all the footage.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All four of them take a moment to contemplate the nightmare that is an otherwise very competent Secret Service agent deliberately interacting with cameras for the meme.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The first time I met Bond,” Connie says after the silence, evidently deciding to back to the previous topic, “he gave me the heebie-jeebies.” Then, solemnly, she explains, “He had nothing else to give.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With that proclamation, she sinks down further into Sam’s side, and her limbs go loose and soft in sleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bond giving ‘the heebie-jeebies’ for lack of anything else to give, Q reflects, is not uncommon. It’s generally why he tries to deal with most of Bond’s equipment debriefs. Nine times out of ten, Bond comes home with exactly none of his equipment, and looms over anyone who isn’t R or Q in an attempt to intimidate them out of reprimanding him. Well, that’s not entirely true; he looms over R and Q, too, it just doesn’t faze them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Most of the agents give me the heebie-jeebies,” Sam admits. “Except Double-oh Two: he just gives me anger.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s fair,” R agrees, although Q knows for a fact that she hasn’t been nervous around a Double-oh agent since their third year of working for Six, and even then it was only because she was scared about asking Bobby on a date.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m going to give him a fist in his face,” Sam says, downing the last of his drink. He shifts and Connie slips further down against him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>R comes to the rescue, slipping off her chair to scoop Connie up in a princess carry. “I’ll put her on the couch in the break room,” she says, and disappears off in that direction.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Q turns back to Sam, he flinches away from the intense stare levelled at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If Bond ever hurts you—” Sam brandishes a finger in Q’s face. “—we’re going to kill him very painfully and solely. Slowly and painfully.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A scattered cheer goes up around the room from several others turning away from their own conversations to agree. Q catches several more creative threats, as well as a few emphatic shouts of ‘die!’.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something catches in his chest. He looks out for his minions, yes, but they look out for him, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam slumps back against the table. “And then we’ll kill Beaufort, too, because you might as well once you’ve committed one murder already and he deserves it more than Bond.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right,” Q says. “Thanks for that. I appreciate it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even though he trusts Bond and everyone in the room is at least most of the way to absolutely hammered, Q thinks they mean it. And, he thinks, he does appreciate it.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Keep notes:<br/>--okay this is cracky but you know what? i had fun<br/>--I have a paranoia about coca-cola bc my friends always make the joke about cocaine and it makes me weirdly nervous so I always have to put coca-cola instead of just coke</p><p>(that's all there is bc I wrote most of this in one go at 1am in the morning and didn't stop for long enough to make any more notes)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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